


in bygone days we mixed our blood together

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bisexual Loki (Marvel), Dysfunctional Family, F/F, F/M, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), M/M, Odin (Marvel)'s A+ Parenting, Protective Frigga (Marvel), Queer Themes, Thor Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 19:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12942291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: It has taken Loki a long time to come to terms with himself.





	in bygone days we mixed our blood together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lena7142](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena7142/gifts).



> A fic inspired by [this incredible amazing wonderful picture](http://portraitoftheoddity.tumblr.com/post/168276319169/hes-here-get-used-to-it-for-gaslightgallows) of Loki in a “Queer as in Fuck You” t-shirt.
> 
> So, it turns out it’s _really hard_ to write about personal shit, but somehow making Loki suffer makes it easier.
> 
> If you’re on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness. Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥

Shapes are malleable. Loki learns that before he can speak. Before he can walk. Perhaps even before he is born.

Shapes. Not people.

He learns this when he is six years old and Thor is seven (their birthdays are only a few months apart but oh, it makes all the difference) that he can change how things look but not who and what they are.

“Sorry for turning you into a frog.”

“I forgive you, brother. Don’t do it again.”

“I thought it would be fun.”

“I didn’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“I felt... squished. Like wearing clothes that don’t fit. I don’t know how to be a frog.”

Loki learns, that day. He learns that can change Thor into a frog but the frog is still Thor. Thor does not become a frog in his heart.

He tries it on himself next. Turns himself into a frog. Then a snake. The snake feels better than the frog (good enough to tease Thor, who loves snakes) but still not him. Sometimes he gets stuck and needs Mother’s help to change back. Once, he has to go to dinner in the shape of a cat, and gets kicked by one of the serving men before anyone realizes that it’s him.

Thor roars with laughter. Mother hides her proud smile from everyone but Loki and helps him change back, and soothes the ache in his ribs from where the server's boot caught him.

Father is unamused. “Enough,” he says. “No more.”

Loki hangs his head over his dinner and says nothing. He knows Father does not like that Mother has taught him magic. He knows Father would rather he take more interest in sports and fighting and games, as Thor does. Manly pursuits, fit for a warrior. He knows he disappoints his father the king.

He leaves the table early and goes to his room, and tries to turn himself into something Odin will approve of. He takes off his clothes and stands in front of the long mirror in his chamber, and casts his spell with a new aim.

The transfiguration works, mostly. He is only nine, after all, and doesn’t know quite how a girl is put together under their clothes. He can’t ask his tutors to show him how to dissect a girl, the way he did with the frog and the snake and the cat. So he knows he hasn’t got it _quite_ right.

But when he finishes the spell and stands in his girl’s body, and looks at himself in the mirror, it feels... no different from the boy’s body. It doesn’t feel squished or hot or like he’s missing anything important. It feels natural. Good. He (she?) likes it. It just feels like... Loki.

He shows Mother what he can do, hoping against hope that being different, _really_ different, will make Father approve of him more.

She hugs him tightly and then says, no, it will not please Father, and to not do it again.

So he never does, in front of her.

* * *

Odin finds out about it later, after centuries of Loki slipping through the realms in a variety of forms and shapes, all shaded and colored to his, or her, own moods, but all of them entirely Loki. “This debauchery must stop,” he tells his son, after he has outright refused to allow a female-bodied Loki into his presence. “Thor is to be king soon, and he cannot have his brother making a fool of him.”

“Is that not the function of second princes? Of spares? To raise merry hell for their monarchs? Really, Father, if you will not give me anything to do, you can hardly blame me for being irresponsible. And why single me out? Thor has even less to do than I and he goes to bed with whomever he pleases. Fandral fucks anything with a hole in it.”

“They bed women, as princes ought.”

Loki’s jaw tightens, as it often does in his father’s presence. “By which, I take to mean, I am not as I ‘ought’ to be.”

“You have always been too womanish in your pursuits,” says Odin. “You fight as a woman does because your mother taught you to fight, with magic as with blades. That is my fault. I should not have left you to your mother’s care as long as I did.”

Loki balls his hands into fists at his sides. How many times has he heard similar words, from idiots all over the realms? “You respect Mother for her magic. You have magic of your own! Are you 'too womanish' to be king? Then why must I hide what I am?”

“Wearing a woman’s face is a disguise. It is not who you are.”

“And who am I?”

“You are my son. You are a prince of Asgard, and you _will_ behave as one!”

“Why should I? When no matter how I behave, it’s never good enough for you!”

Odin banishes him to the mountains for a year, for his impertinence. Loki accepts his exile with ill-grace, but when he gets there, he becomes philosophical. The Einherjar sent to be his warders are all handsome, and there are courtly nobles in the small city where the royal family has their retreat, and he has found ways to avoid Odin's eye. He spends the year by himself, doing as he pleased without responsibility, being who it felt right to be on any given day, and when he is permitted to return to the palace, he can afford to be gracious and humble and seek Odin's forgiveness.

“I’m pleased that you have learned sense,” says the king, welcoming his second son back to the high table.

And Loki smiles cordially, grasping his mother’s hand and raising a toast to his brother, because all he has learned is how better to hide.

* * *

Midgard is a cesspool. Why Thor has any fondness for the place, Loki cannot begin to understand, but the realm is to be his, in recompense for the stolen throne of Asgard, and he means to rule it, once the mortals are subdued, and even in the midst of his enthrallment (he recognizes it later, for what it truly is) he means to be a good and benevolent god-king. There is so much _wrong_ with Earth.

The more he studies the world and its culture and defenses and weaknesses, the more horrified he is that Asgard has left it alone for so long.

He has never known of another Asgardian who feels as he does, but there are thousands, millions of them on Midgard, persecuted on a scale that even Loki, for all that he has suffered, has never had to endure. At least he can change. Mortals? Mortals are _static_.

Thor had thrown him off the Bifrost for being a Frost Giant and the rightful king, but not for living as a woman at times or for having his sexual preferences be defined solely by who he found attractive at any given moment.

A tiny spark of indignation burns in Loki’s convoluted heart, that lingers even beyond his inevitable defeat and imprisonment.

* * *

There is nowhere to hide in his cell. It is a bare white box with one shimmering golden side to allow him to look out, and worse, to allow others to look in.

“I’m shocked at Odin’s benevolence,” he tells the image of the queen, who insists on visiting him, in spite of the king’s decree. Loki is grateful to her for that, more than he can allow himself to feel. “He keeps the gawkers away. I had expected the court to flock to see the freak in his cage. The monster. The bent, unmanly Frost Giant.”

“You are not a freak, Loki,” Frigga insists, her voice warm and soothing and slightly desperate.

“Aren’t I?” He paces the cage in badly-contained agitation. He has not been permitted his normal clothes; his boots and fighting leathers are forbidden to him, and he feels under-dressed and exposed in simple linen and slippers. “Odin has never been anything but ashamed of me, my lady, he has made that abundantly clear on many occasions.”

Her eyes slide closed in pain at the use of her formal title. He flinches a little; he has been trying to avoid calling her Mother, but he never expected her to notice. “I know, Loki. I should have spoken up for you. You have always been a good son – a good _child_. That is all that should have mattered.”

“Well, thank you for that, at this late date.” Loki comes to a stop in front of a plain white wall. He balls his hand into a fist and places it against the wall, leaning his full weight against his knuckles, trying desperately to make a dent in the featureless surface. “Every time someone calls me less than a man, I tell myself that it’s an insult to you. It makes them easier to bear. I can defend your name. That’s _honorable_ behavior for a prince.” He scrapes his fist down the wall, but it makes no change. “I hate this place,” he mutters. “I hate this realm. I hate that no matter what I do, no matter where I go, I will never be _enough_.”

“Ruling Midgard would not have changed that,” Frigga points out.

“No, but _I_ could have changed _them_.” Loki whirls round on her, his words sharp and metallic on his tongue. They are not the words of his enthrallment, and they feel _wrong_ in his mouth but _right_ in his heart, and the battle between them sets his cells on fire. “How can Thor claim to protect them when he can't even protect them from their own foul ignorance?” he demands, gasping in pain. “How can he, how can _you_ , claim to love me when you refuse to acknowledge what I always knew myself to be?”

Frigga has no answer to that, only anguish in her eyes as he falls to his knees before her, crying out against the poisonous will entrenched in his veins, and the inability to take him into her arms, as they both long for.

* * *

Sakaar is _amazing_. No one cares. No one gives a damn about who he sleeps with or what gender he decides to present as. No one gives a single fuck, unless they specifically want to fuck _him_. Or watch him fuck someone else.

Loki has always preferred to tangle in corners and in dark places, because anyone finding her would lead to nothing good. But on Sakaar, in the Grandmaster's boudoir, she is expected to put on a show, and by the Norns, if that's what they _want_ \- well, she has some experience with theater now.

The Grandmaster is a terrifying lunatic but _heavens_ , he likes a good performance. And Loki, who has always longed for adulation for his grand tricks, gets more than he can stand. For three weeks he lives in a constant state of semi-inebriated terror, but for the first time in his life, he is neither strange nor special. No matter what shape he takes or who takes him to bed, he is simply Loki.

She doesn’t want to go back to Asgard. And Thor doesn’t make her. But he makes it Loki’s responsibility.

* * *

Thor needs to learn how to knock. It’s his own damned fault anyway, for barging into Loki’s room on the ship without so much as a hello, and scaring the crap out of himself. “I thought you were Hela!” he gasps. He looks at his fingers, still sparking, and reaches down to help Loki to her feet.

“Idiot,” Loki snarls, to cover how shaken she is. Because she had thought the same thing, when she looked in the mirror. “I don’t look _that_ much like her.” And she didn’t. Not really. She was narrower in the face than her sister had been, but her mouth was less firm, more mobile, her eyes less piercing, more hooded and searching, than Hela’s had been, and there was a pronounced cleft in her chin that she never quite expected, but always turned up, and always felt right.

“You... haven’t done that since we were children.”

 _Not in front of you._ “Yes,” she says neutrally. “It’s been a long time.” She pulls her long, long black hair away from her face and stares at her reflection, looking for something. “No wonder Mother never wanted Odin to see this. Still, it’s a pity. Perhaps it he had, all this business would have come out into the open in time for us to have done something about it.”

* * *

He doesn’t do it to prove anything to anyone, he tells himself, pulling on the thin green shirt that Bruce sent him from New York, possibly as a joke, but... possibly not. His mythological counterpart is known for his ‘transgressive’ sexual appetites, after all.

No, he does it because it feels right and just and, yes, wonderfully transgressive. He likes the Midgardian clothing he’s worn in the past, but the tailored suits feel like they belong to someone else, to an arrogant dethroned prince, not to a tired, exiled adopted Asgardian. Once the wording was explained to him, and he was assured that it was customary for Midgardians who were not children to wear slogans on their clothes, he decided he liked the message.

And more often than not, it fits his mood perfectly.

“You can’t wear that to the interview,” says Thor in dismay.

“Why not, too casual?” Loki pulls a charcoal-colored blazer out of thin air and puts it on. “There, will that do?”

“I meant the shirt. You can’t wear that, there will be cameras.”

“So I’ll offend some closed-minded idiots.” Loki shrugs. “Oh well.”

“It’s not that, it’s...” His brother’s hesitation is almost adorable. “Is that the first impression you want Midgard to have of you?”

“Second impression.”

“First _true_ impression,” Thor persists, as though the decision of the worldwide panel of ‘experts’ who had ‘examined’ Loki after their arrival to proclaim him ‘reformed’ actually meant anything to the world at large.

Loki’s lips thin. “Are you going to follow Father’s example in this?” he asks quietly. “Make me hide everything I am from public light?”

Thor looks shaken. “No. Of course not.”

“At least this...” Loki gestures to the slogan emblazoned on his chest. “Is something these mortals can understand.”

“Some of them,” Thor replies, with care.

Loki grins suddenly. “What’s wrong, brother? Worried about my safety?”

“Always.”

The grin fades, and Loki has to look away before his control breaks. “Think of it as a statement of intent. I have no further interest in ruling this world, but I’m always interested in chaos. And if I’m called on – say, by people who are tired of hiding who they are, who may even need a champion of their own ilk – then chaos is what this world will get.”

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who's curious, Lady Loki in this fic, at least in my mind, looks like a brunette Jessica Chastain. Yes, he goes from Thomas to Lucy Sharpe. XD


End file.
